Hanyong Park, Kenneth J. de Jong, and Noah Silvert.
Models, such as SLM and PAM, predict that performance on second language sounds
is determined by the perceptual relationship of the sounds to the original language
categories. To measure this relationship, Schmidt [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 99, 3201--3211]
had native Korean speakers classify English consonant productions into Korean
orthographic categories, and assess the similarity of the consonants to the
chosen categories. The current experiment further examines how Korean labeling
relates to accuracy in using English orthographic categories. Results show Koreans
poorly identify sounds rated as dissimilar from Korean categories. Similarly,
sounds that are inconsistently labeled with Korean labels are less accurately
identified. These results suggest that accuracy varies with the nearness of
the English and a Korean category, and thus English categories are developed
from original Korean categories. However, other results indicate that sounds
straddling Korean categories can be very accurately labeled, suggesting a complete
suppression of native contrasts. In addition, identification accuracy for subjectively
odd sounds can be very high, suggesting the development of a new category. Similarly,
cases in which both Korean and English labeling is inconsistent show no relationship
between the Korean and the English labels, indicating that the English categories
are constructed apart from the existing Korean categories.